The company has taken steps to answer PM Modi's call for multinationals to produce more fruit-based drinks to help Indian farmers.

Coca-Cola has changed its game. The Atlanta-based company that brews the world's most recognisable beverage brand, has an entirely new marketing approach and is among the big brands at the forefront of the NDA government's 'Make In India' movement. Recently, the company launched Fanta Green Mango with 10.4 per cent fruit juice. Thus answering Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for multinationals to produce more fruit-based drinks to help Indian farmers.

Last week, Coca-Cola announced its intention to make Maaza, the country's largest selling mango juice drink, the world's first billion dollar juice drink brand by 2023. (Its current retail sales are Rs 2,500 crore.) But it strives to do so in an inclusive fashion. The company plans to grow the fortunes and improve fates of tens of thousands of farmers, while it gets Maaza membership in the billion dollar club. Coca-Cola will procure 1.4 lakh metric tonnes of mango pulp from Indian farmers, annually, according to company projections.

Despite its best intentions and efforts, however, Coca-Cola is often cast as Evil Corp in the anti-consumerist tale that highlights the social, health and environmental impact of soulless corporations Coca-Cola, and other "Big Soda" companies, are the prime accused for America's obesity epidemic. In India, along with other beverage giants like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola has been blamed for, well, sucking the earth dry; for years villagers have been complaining of fast sinking ground water levels around Coca-Cola's bottling plants. Earlier this month, Coca-Cola stopped production in three plants citing inadequate demand. One of them is the Kaladera plant in Jaipur. Activist body India Resource Center (IRC), however, has alleged that one of the primary reasons for the closure of this plant is water depletion.

On the side lines of Make In India week in Mumbai, we asked Venkatesh Kini, president Coca-Cola India and South West Asia, his thoughts on the casting of Coca-Cola as an international villain and what the company is doing to alter the perception and, more importantly, to make tangible changes in how it operates.

Nobody is perfect

"I won't say we are perfect", Kini makes a candid declaration, "but Coca-Cola takes environmental issues very seriously". The company he tells us is dedicated to reducing its environmental footprint. Having said that, he also implies that often accusations against Coca-Cola are misplaced. The fact is Coca-Cola is a symbol of corporate might, it has a staggering 3,500 products worldwide; it's a brand most of humanity, save a few tribes which have been living in happy, self-imposed isolation, are familiar with.

Andriane Quinlan painted a rather scathing picture of Coke's ubiquity for Lucky Peach; "A red can of Coke is a modern symbol of the bland sameness of global culture, the Coca-colonization of American capitalism, and what Andy Warhol once described as a great leveler. ('No amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.')" Says Kini, "When anyone wants to raise awareness the best way is to attack the symbol."

It's business, not personal

Kini backs up Coca-Cola's green-credential claims. The maker of Fanta, Sprite, Limca and Thums Up, among others, has invested to make its systems more efficient, and has reduced consumption from 4 to 2 litres of water per 1 litre of beverage. In 1993, when Coca-Cola entered the Indian market, 10 litres of water was used to produce just one 1 litre of soda, we have unthinkingly consumed with our butter chicken for so many years. Water is the life blood of beverage firms and a critical focus area for business.

In August last year, the Coca-Cola Company and its global bottling partners (the Coca-Cola system) announced that it would replenish 100per cent of the water used by the end of 2015. A goal, to be 100per cent water-neutral, it had originally set for 2020. Critics, however, marvel at its rather premature completion. Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO, The Coca-Cola Company, said in a statement then, "As a consumer of water, the Coca-Cola system has a special responsibility to protect this shared resource." Coca-Cola's senior director of Global Water Stewardship, Greg Koch, told Bloomberg Business that the program isn't philanthropic so much as a strategic business imperative. No water, no Coke. It's that simple.

The net of water-neutrality

But here's the catch. The very definition of "water neutral" is under scrutiny. Critics and activists have called it a PR tool, just another form of greenwashing. In 2007, E. Neville Isdell, former chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, said, "Our goal is to replace every drop of water we use in our beverages and their production." The means include recycling, balancing, off-setting, and "replenishing water in communities and nature through locally relevant projects."

There are some fundamental flaws in how companies understand and implement measures to meet their water neutrality goals. First, it's hard to capture all water footprint. For instance, water used in agriculture is not accounted for. Second, water is a local resource. The IRC's director Amit Srivastava wrote in a post on the website Ecologist; "When Coca-Cola extracts water from a depleted aquifer in Varanasi or Jaipur, the impacts are borne by the local communities... Replenishing an aquifer hundreds of miles away from the point of extraction has no bearing on the health of the local aquifer..."

A 2007 concept paper on "water neutrality", written by scientists, including some affiliated with the WWF and UNESCO IHE – Institute of Water Education, and Coca-Cola's Koch, states, "...'water neutral' was chosen as an inspirational phrase that resonates with the public and could be used to describe one's efforts to off-set their water footprint." An acknowledgement of its PR roots. The paper also highlights the fact that, "Taking a strict interpretation, no individual or entity that uses water can ever be entirely water neutral, as water use cannot be reduced to zero."

So, where does that leave Coca-Cola's, or for that matter any company's claim of being 100 per cent water neutral? Like everything else, it's open to interpretation.